


will you remember (me, as I was?)

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Yearning, future and past, visions of future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future and now. (Morwen, almost 1k)</p>
            </blockquote>





	will you remember (me, as I was?)

**Author's Note:**

> I has sad Morwen feels. Ugh but I love them. God. Also glad to have been able to write something in between that ridiculously long Brolin fic \o/. 
> 
> And now, excuse me whilst I cry.

will you remember the feelings and colors  
bad dreams comforted by warm arms that held you so close  
will you regret everything that you said  
or will you hold it close to your heart  
cause I will be waiting  
I’ll just keep waiting, hold on

[Clarissa’s Weird—low budget slow motion soundtrack for the leaving scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_dPFQZG_7c)

 

Alone, at night, with her husband out on a hunt or a quest or spending the night with his knights in the tavern—when the mattress beneath her is too soft with luxury, the gown’s fabric over her body too smooth, Guinevere lets her traitorous feet take her down a path no one treads anymore, and she shivers in the wind breezing through this forgotten corridor. She feels the stones of the walls cool and uneven beneath her palms and fingers as she walks to the odd rhythm of her heavy heart in a castle that has begun to feel, years ago, like a beautiful cage and not a protective stronghold.

She pushes a door open that has remained closed for so long people have forgotten it’s there. She enters chambers that still feel like home more than the bed she’s sharing, and she feels the ghost that she has become test out her own skin, again, only to find it fitting in the first time since what feels like an eternity. So ghost and body align and both become ghost, and the shards scattered over the dusty floor of this room are pulled together to melt, becoming one.

Gwen closes her eyes and lets her feet map out the geometry of the room that’s still branded into her mind, like her very first memory of sunshine. She walks the path her dreams walk, past the wardrobe with creaking doors to her right down to the ornate glass windows. The desk with the large dusty mirror shows nothing of Gwen’s hollow face when she tries to see how haunted she has become. The bed she sits down on, then, is soft still but smells like mould, like decay. From the back of the room she watches the decadence Morgana’s chambers are, these days, and her fingers curl into the sheet that no longer smells of her friend.

There are cobwebs and dust so thick it feels like a protective layer of warmth underneath Gwen’s feet. There are rolls of parchment on the desk, yellowing, as though they were abandoned only minutes ago and already forgotten. The air smells choked, as though Morgana had left all her fear and hatred behind only to cause the oxygen in the room to rot.

Death is pervasive in here, weighs heavy on the lungs and the eyes. Nostalgia is the blood embracing Gwen’s heart, pumping a timeless yearning through her veins. Memories lie on her tongue like ash, rough in texture and bitter in taste.

Gwen’s eyes burn, then, as she sees the flowers she has brought last week are left a withered mess on the bed, wilting from the atmosphere.

All is dead, in here. Decayed and suffocated and expired. Gwen cannot stand it any longer, hates the way she keeps being haunted back into this room only to breathe in the smoke of not-forgetting, but she cannot leave. She cannot leave.

Because when she looks up, what she sees is this:

Morgana is standing before the windows, with her back to Gwen. It’s an illusion, it always is, and Gwen can tell from the way Morgana’s hair looks almost liquid in the moonlight falling inside. But it’s an illusion so poignant and wrecking, because this is Morgana as Gwen will always her remember her: when Morgana turns her face, her eyes are dark, the bow of her mouth angry, but she stands straight and resolute, the jut of her shoulders proud, and even her ghost speaks of an unrelenting boldness along with an inherent sadness that she had but Gwen knows she never wanted to be. 

Morgana is clad in her nightgown, its seams touching the floor (as though she were about to go to sleep) and draped over her shoulders is her thick dark green cloak (as though she were about to leave).

And the sight of her face, her strong jaw and soft cupid’s bow, shudders through Gwen with an ache she will never understand, and she doubles over, holding herself in the empty room, lonely, because—

Because even Morgana’s ruins are beautiful.

\--

That will be the future.

Now, there’s only Gwen’s hand on Morgana’s belly, the other on her hip. There’s only holding Morgana through the echoes of her nightmares as Morgana trembles in her arms; there’s only the wish of bestowing calm when she places a soft kiss on Morgana’s bared, strong neck, feeling that terrified rabbit pulse underneath her lower lip.

Here is Morgana’s hands finding Gwen’s when she awakes, fingers freezing and quaking as they intertwine with Gwen’s. Here is a secret, a hope, a threat, sitting on the bow of her lower lip, never finding freedom, only choked in the pillow as the hated tears burn down her cheeks and nose.

Here Gwen is herself still and not Guinevere (as her husband will keep calling her later without ever noticing the way it will make her want to tear down walls), and Morgana is a butterfly just out of its cocoon, trapped in the broad hands of a man with too much power and too little love left.

Here deception is still in bloom, a stubborn newborn rosebud that has not yet shown its thorns.

Here love is at its strongest, growing in the only space it is allowed to grow, which is in secrecy and darkness.

But here is love, and it is here before the future is.


End file.
